Kaldo

I also think some people get a bit too defensive over the combat system in VS that is simply put controversial. One of the most popular mods with over 300k downloads at this moment is Combat Overhaul after all, and I don't think there's a better argument than that to prove that people don't want it easier - they want it better. I dunno about other people but when *I* say that I don't enjoy fighting the bowtorn it has nothing to do with difficulty. I played many other games in the genre that had both simple and complex combat, more or less difficult, customizeable or not. It has nothing to do with the other block game or this game somehow requiring a special pass for being "uncompromising". I think their attacks should be better telegraphed, as in align with their actual animations better, and be more fun to play around than what they are now. Bears should make noise. Drifters shouldn't throw rocks at a whim. Difficulty should be accomplished in other interesting ways and not boil down to locking you into a shield to deal with 1 out of 3 (common) varieties of the rift enemies. Some of these ways can be adding weak points, different attack patterns or behaviors, increasing enemy variety, making gear more in-depth (for instance, not just having spears, falxes and bows)... Or just giving players more options on how to engage with them besides cheese. As for the comments about staying in during nights, that's a very moot point considering I've had many situations when they just stay on the surface well after the sun is up. I thought people don't like talking about combat because it's always been like this but then I realized bowtorn have only been added relatively recently, in 1.20, even their wiki page isn't finished yet. Feedback about them should be welcomed in such cases even if this game weren't basically in early access, and especially with such low enemy variety to begin with, meaning they need to do well with the few they have.

I know people tend to just respond "skill issue" to this but bowthorns are too accurate and their targeting range is too big. Maybe it's funny but it is not fun to open the door for 2 seconds, close it and immediately hear 3 thunks from sniper bowthorns from a bush 30 blocks away suppressing me with their sniper fire. Trying to run up to one gets you shot even if you try to zig zag, and then in addition to all that they spread out and run away, making it even more annoying to chase them down - even worse when done in caves. When you do run up to them they can do quick badly-telegraphed close range attacks too. I've had stronger variants spawn in surface and they also had a ton of HP making them pretty tough to deal with when it's more than one. I love challenge and combat in games like these, I love getting good at it and mastering the system, but you know... not like this lol, this ain't it imho. I think we need better enemy attack telegraphs to start off, and that includes ranged attacks from basically invisible positions too.

Is vsync turned off?

Huh, good timing on this thread revival. I just had this experience yesterday and it was weird because the first time I went into the cave, torches and light worked fine. I returned the next day with a new batch of torches and they couldn't even light it up 4 blocks away. I have no idea what it depends on, rift activity was low IIRC and I didn't notice anything else out of place. Weird system, if intentional... no idea how you're supposed to counter it?

Honestly I tune the gear wheel out of my mind most of the time, it's not really something I keep an eye out for all the time. Maybe it should disappear if it's at 100% and only pop up when it starts decreasing, which would call more attention to it too (I think more people could use that, I'm not the only one blind about these temporal spots apparently lol)

Everyone is (justifiably) so excited about rivers (and I am too) but nobody talking about elevators? I would love more uses for mechanical power and having an elevator would be an absolutely phenomenal use of it, I love mechanical and functional stuff like that. It's an optimistic roadmap and I know we shouldn't take anything on it for granted but I really hope you pull it off, these are all exciting and meaningful changes I'd be looking forward to! Since I'm a relative newcomer can someone chime in and say how long did 1.21 take in total, what kind of a timeframe are we looking at if this is comparable to that patch?

Maybe it's just my bad luck or me not exploring the world enough but the few caves I've found are pretty small and short, or just big vertical holes. I think I might like to experience a world with a huge network of interconnected labyrinthine cave passages, with sudden chasms or big openings underground, making deep mining more of an exploration trip requiring torches and markings on the wall rather than just vertical rock digging and swapping pickaxes and propicks. It'd make supports necessary for digging into cave walls, you'd have to build bridges to cross over larger gaps, fight enemies along the way, etc. Maybe even establish some infrastructure for easier travel and transportation of goods, like smaller outposts with cellars and food, since you'd be going through these passages often. Is this doable? I tried looking up cave mods but they don't seem that popular or even maintained anymore, and world gen settings don't seem to have anything related to underground generation.

I think the temperature isn't simulated that realistically. As long as you are indoors the outside temperature doesn't seem to matter that much, I'm in december now and I haven't had to light up a fireplace a single time so far and temperatures definitely dropped below my clothing threshold. Similarly, when outside the temperature only seems to matter regarding the body temperature dropping, which eventually causes HP damage, but otherwise you're just 20% hungrier no matter your insulation or the temperature diff. So I'd say it only shows the outside temperature because if you stay outside when it's too cold relative to your clothes insulation, you might eventually start taking damage. Correct me if I've interpreted sth wrong

I'm the type of gamer who doesn't really like slow beginnings and prefers the mid-game when you have tons of paths ahead of you and various tools at your disposal. When your house becomes larger and more personalized, when you're already familiar with the surroundings and layout of the terrain. In this regard VS seems very frontloaded to me - when you start off you have to learn food preservation in cellars, clayforming, cooking, leatherworking, farming, smithing, prospecting... You want better tools because of durability and options like the saw/boards while also having to build up food reserves for winter. I think it's somewhat reasonable that you pretty quickly burned out on having to do all of this, perhaps? It was like that for me too the first time around and now on the second save, with a very liberal application of mods to address the things I didn't like, I found the game much better paced. I rushed through the stone and copper age and got to bronze and iron pretty fast, letting me relax and focus on other things, plan out the slower winter months in advance. The copper tool durability and some outright traps in that department soured my first game a lot. I'd agree that pacing could be an issue with the game itself, but it is also something you get to "fix" yourself with knowledge pretty efficiently too. Maybe that's kind of the point too lol

This is probably a depressing take but I think I like them because of how your effort is always rewarded, the game is built with the idea that if you put in the time you also get results. RL is hardly ever as straightforward and easy as that The fact that there is no deadline and fees hanging above your head is also a plus (well, besides hunger but that's manageable). I also mostly like sandbox games that let you grow at your own desired pace instead of forcing some scaling unwanted threat, so I think there's something to what you're saying. Also, digging a hole irl is so much harder than ingame, so unfair

I turned rifts back on because I kinda missed the danger from traveling in the nights too, I do like some tension and fear, but the issue is that they make it difficult to even work when staying at home due to the sniping from the dark. Practically speaking this just means my house must be a bunker instead of having a terrace, garden or some fenced-off outside area - even if they are lit up to prevent spawns within them. When I get enough lanterns I might just place them everywhere while building 3 block high walls around the base, maybe that's the intended solution.

To be honest in my ~70 hours of VS i've never tamed a single animal yet. The few I find I have trouble enough just killing for skins and fat in the first year, less alone somehow capturing and taming them? Reading that you have to keep them for many multiple generations is even more daunting tbh I'm slowly going into winter in my current game and if it manages to keep my interest until spring, I'm hoping I get to around finally doing it then, so while I'm excited about the idea - I'd have to also say that I have utilized it 0% so far lol

Aww, of all the options you missed my go-to complaint: building. In a world with packed and rammed dirt there is no practical reason to use anything else, ever. Advanced building materials, while pretty, are not only pretty expensive and tedious to make but can also in addition to that be flammable or break when deconstructed. It's just one con after the other! Wish we had practical functional reasons to build better houses with proper roofs. Considering how detailed and complex the game is in other areas I'm always surprised this part is not talked about more often. I am also just now realizing how much the mods affect my perception of the game. Many of these options are kinda shallow in vanilla game, but with mods like toolsmith, butchery, golden combs, it's a whole new experience and it's difficult to think of the game without them nowadays. edit: I might have misunderstood the assignment, the title makes it seem like the question is which mechanic the game is underutilizing, but the poll title seems to ask what I used the least. oh well ^^

I honestly don't get this mechanic at all. What is its purpose? What does it accomplish? Why is it not telegraphed and explained properly ingame? It's just a random fuck-you to players that want to build in a specific spot, or dont notice until it's too late. You can't even turn it off in the settings despite being able to turn off rifts and storms. whyyyyyyyy does it exist IIRC there's a mod that removes it but does in a hacky way and might not be updated

I would say stick with your first map as long as you can. You will be inefficient, make mistakes, and learn - restarting all the time will just make that process (even more) grueling. However, it will make your 2nd map later on when you're more experienced even more sweeter and you will know to properly customize it to your liking. If you start restarting now you'll want to do it every 5 hours and be constantly unhappy - at least that's how I usually am You can make any spawn work but I would say don't be too afraid of mods if you see something bothering you very much, there's probably a mod that can fix or improve it. Just keep regular backups and check if mods lets you install them half way through.

There are quite a few community made tools for this. There is rustique if you like the terminal, but atm I'm using VS launcher which also lets you easily manage multiple different installations alongside their mods. It is not being developed actively as the creator is working on a big rewrite though, but so far it worked flawlessly for me.

I know I could tweak the settings, create the map, load into it, turn on cheats, fly around to discover it manually... then copy the seed and slightly adjust the settings again in a new world all over again, create it, load into it, fly manually, etc. but I'm hoping there's maybe a smarter and faster way? Factorio has a neat way of showing a small preview of the starting zone to the right of the world gen settings menu, would something like this be doable with mods perhaps? Maybe a console command to reveal terrain, or maybe even a command to change world gen settings and force the world to regenerate "live" so I dont have to create new worlds all the time? This question brought to you by me creating a Terra Prety:Coastlines and Continents world with their recommended settings and after 20-30 hours in it realizing there are no coastlines and continents, at least not in any vicinity to spawn.

I dunno if it's luck, the terra prety mod or just me being more experienced but my second world is going so much smoother than the first one. I put in some immersion/difficulty mods like butchering, toolsmith but I'm still thriving - after ~20 hours I even found some chalk and bees. Still no salt of course, but I do have a cave with high hematite readings. Might even get a basic windmill up before winter fully hits. I still feel like the world should have more distinct biomes. Maybe each island is a biome and you have to sail between them, or large (vanilla) rivers to give some sensible form and memorable layout... my one complaint so far is that it's just valleys, forests and random holes, thought the mod might make it more interesting but it's not really that much better.

I've gone through the early copper grind twice so far and I still agree that it's not really fun. In fact it seems like they intentionally designed it to trap newbies and make their lives even harder lol. You have to know to search for nugget locations, to mark them after gathering them, which tools to make (and not make), not to dig too much because copper tools fall apart so fast... Even when I knew about these it still wasn't a very fun experience to be stuck with flint tools for so long. It's even worse if you start to get into the experienced mindset of rushing bronze or even iron. Agreed on ranged enemies being too annoying to fight. Bears are fine since you can trap them easily and cheese their AI, but I don't like that they can jump that high - makes my fences ugly. Most bears I ran into ignored me so it wasnt that bad for exploration. I also dislike rifts and their random spawning on top of my base so I disabled them on my 2nd game. I wish I was incentivized to build defensive structures that work, like perimeter walls, palisades, moats or w/e, instead of just spamming everything in light sources or disabling it outright when I don't want to do that. I know mods can fix some issues and people can customize the game themselves, but I still think the game should have solid vanilla design before people start tweaking it, and in some areas like these I do agree it's a bit lacking. Progression with building materials and armors/clothing is also a bit iffy for newbies imho.

And here I thought I was pushing the boundaries too much with ~50 mods, since it already started freezing and crashing my game Honestly with so many good mods out there I don't think I could play vanilla anymore, they not only add more content but also really nicely fill up some weaker aspects of the game and make it more enjoyable. I just wish it didn't come with a huge death timer above my head before the save gets corrupted / mods outdated / game starts crashing...

I also wish piles were more efficient since its my favorite way of storing goods, but sooner or later you will have to use chests whether you want or not. I tend to have a small "quick access / decorative" pile next to the chest which then actually stores hundreds of items.

You could phrase an argument like that for almost any existing mechanic in the game too. Why make it so people have to craft their tools manually - it won't make them happy when all they want is to run around and hunt, fight, explore? Why have food spoilage in the game or winters when all it does is slow down the game? Why mold clay one bit at a time when it would get in the way of action? Remove things like that and you're just playing vanilla minecraft again. I think most of the discussion in this thread is very much in line with what the game already expects of you as a player in a realistic immersive survival game. You can't have long term satisfaction and sense of progress without some cost being associated with it, so it's weird that the game is so selective about what it wants to simulate to such an extreme degree and what gets ignored completely on the other hand.

I just wanted to add that I'm not saying they should copy Valheim or Grounded or that any of the other ideas are a good or a bad fit for VS, I just wanted to give examples of how some other games do it and what is "thematically" missing in VS for me. I think it's an issue with progression and that all those improvement steps we have in the game shouldn't be just for roleplay or cosmetic "pretty" building since the game is otherwise very mechanically-oriented and challenging. Basically, it is weird for me that a game where you have to manually shape clay to create a mold to pour molten metal in... a game that has temperature and seasonal changes with harsh winters... that has a 5+ step process for leatherworking...doesn't even differentiate between a pile of dirt, or a properly built house with thatch roof. It seems like a missed opportunity, and its not related specifically to house building but how the game feels in general, in other areas too.

I have to admit that I haven't found many memorable landmarks on my first map. It's mostly a flat area with many lakes and very small forest clumps on the sides. I regret not seeing all the comments about reducing landmass sooner, and configuring a "continental" map during world gen tbh, but then again I'm not sure if that would mess with ore generation and deep mining too much.

Hi all, I'm a new player (~40 hours) and I'm really liking the game so far! However, it feels weird to me that despite all the complexity in VS, there aren't actually that many reasons or rewards for engaging with these complexities. You can fulfill all the basic requirements really easily and everything afterwards is just a bonus for personal satisfaction and that's it. Shouldn't it be the other way around and the game should incentivize and reward you for going the extra mile? Some specific examples to illustrate what I mean: - You can build the house with (packed) dirt and be fine forever. It's even arguably safer than building with combustible materials, and cheaper than any other option. - Having a varied diet just temporarily increases max hp. You might as well live off bread and turnips forever if you want to. - Building a fortified defensible base doesn't make sense because enemies can spawn within it anyway. - Food spoilage and storage is presented as a big deal but it's solved so fast into the game by just building clay vessels and placing them in a cellar. - Prospecting starts off as a fun triangulation system but then it's just digging, digging, digging, mostly blindly, until you hit a vein. - Winter and cold is supposed to a be a big dramatic risk and then it's just... waiting it out with some increased hunger? Stacking some clothes fixes it? I am not saying the game should be more difficult or annoying (it has enough arbitrary time wasters as it is), but I think there should be a clearer sense of purpose for advanced goals and interesting tangible rewards for engaging with the systems rather than just delaying negative effects. Maybe it's not popular to draw comparisons with other games here but let's look at Valheim - despite being a much simpler and easier game, the sheltered / home rested bonus incentivizes players to build decorated and comfy houses. The food system rewards you for making better food by increasing your stats like health, stamina or mana. Advanced materials have stronger support letting you build taller. Enemies cant spawn in workbench radius so building a defensive palisade or moats actually makes sense. World gen focuses on islands and sea traversal so boats aren't just a luxury, they are a requirement, you can't just run everywhere. TL;DR: VS should incentivize players more to engage with its complex systems instead of it just feeling like chores/creative outlets with no purpose.